Diagnostics and prognostics for aircraft structures using a wireless corrosion monitoring network

Corrosion of aircraft and rotorcraft is one of the primary maintenance cost drivers for the US Military, costing billions of dollars annually, and is by far the largest single maintenance cost for Navy and Marine Corps airframes. Various forms of localized corrosion, such as pitting corrosion, crevice corrosion, exfoliation, and environment assisted cracking, are particularly destructive and can lead to significant structural integrity problems for aircraft. Widespread current practice employs costly schedule based inspection and maintenance to retain acceptable risk levels. To enable condition based maintenance techniques, Luna is developing a diagnostic and prognostic system based on an intelligent wireless corrosion monitoring network.